GoldFFinch Red Mask

Hiding behind their three character website is a Belgian duo called GoldFFinch whose steep vision of dancefloor techno marries loveable little phrases of awkward computer conversation with the kind of kick drums that’ll rattle the windows of your neighbour’s house when your soundsystem is tweaked perfectly. ‘Ovale’ proudly contains the kind of middle section switch up that just swipes chunks at you on the dancefloor. By replacing the woody texture of the kick with an aerated boom that works the lower frequency range, it’s a groove that swallows you whole, propelling you to embrace and celebrate the return of that top end toting kick drum. The A-side ‘Red Mask’ works itself around the same punchy kick but it ramps the propulsion factor up a notch; taking stock a little of the intensity of footwork’s drums and vocal chops, the Belgian twosome keep it grounded very much at a techno pace. A much more insistent drum beat will up the listener’s kind of fidgety neck spasms but behind the drum beat everything’s built a lot more subtly. There’s the bumbling acidic bassline, the extended reverberations of the vocal samples and then this little ominous sounding winding synth line that appears at the breakdown, rides the break for 8 bars and the returns as a ghostly incarnation of its former self. GoldFFinch may well be a duo bent on keeping things simple but when the end result, which is built out of such minimal layers, is so arresting, there’s no need to change the formula. Not one bit.